Jonathan Mills

I have many favourite authors, though certain ones I keep coming back to - Arthur Machen, Robert Aickman, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Ursula Le Guin. I read a lot of Iain Banks and Franz Kafka when I was younger, and Roald Dahl and Beatrix Potter when I was younger still. And then there are authors of whose work I may only have read one novel, but it's one that has lodged firmly amongst my favourites - "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte, "True Grit" by Charles Portis, "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe. Some writers just haunt your imagination, and refuse to leave.

I don't know if it was the first one I ever wrote, but I have a very clear memory of writing a story about cavemen when I was at primary school, about eight or nine years old. I think it was my garbled interpretation of what the teacher had told us about Stone Age life. I remember being very struck by the fact (is it a fact? I really should check this) that cavemen sometimes ate each other's brains, this being the kind of trivia that fascinated my eight-year-old self, and still fascinates me now, child that I am. Naturally, I drew an accompanying illustration.